The male Emporer penguin goes without food for two months to keep an egg warm between his feet and belly... the African Honey Bird leads humans to beehives in order to share in the bounty (it wants the wax, not the honey). Birds do the strangest things! I remember loving this book as a child (along with Animals do the Strangest Things) and was glad to find a copy in a used bookstore to read my own child. It is still just as fascinating as I had remembered! I wish Scholastic would reprint this series.

My son loved the book, especially the chapter on the African lungfish who actually breathe air and live out of water for years. Fascinating.

This book is one of a series X Does the Strangest Things - a series for early readers which introduces them to nature and science in an entertaining way. The writing is active and appealing to its audience "Swoosh! A great load of water rushes in. A fish gets swept in, too. Then the matamata spits our the water. But he doesn't spit out the fish!"

There is a wonderful selection of animals - some from everyday life, some seen at zoos or encountered in stories and some true exotics.

...walking silently at night trying to catch fireflies and capture them in your glass jar so you could figure out how on earth they produced a small light?

We did as children in Africa and there were plenty of insects to observe. Actually, they are not flies at all, but are beetles. In Africa, the beetles can be quite annoying if they get into your house at night because they bang up against the walls as they fly and can drive you quite insane unless you catch them and release them back out into the wild.

Anyway, in this book, they explain how fireflies, their eggs and even the grubs that hatch from the eggs glow. This light has almost no heat.

The contents include:

The Beautiful Dragon (Dragonfly)
Twiggy the Walking Stick
The Little Worker Ants
The Hungry Cloud (Grasshopper)
Lady Luck (The Ladybird beetle)
The Home-Wrecker (The Termite)
The Green Grabber (The Praying Mantis)
The Spinaround (The Whirligig Beetle)
The Runaround Water Strider
The Housebuilder Caddisfly
The Bug Backswimmer
The Enemies (Mosquito and Housefly)
The Marvelous Journey (The Monarch butterfly)
The Silk-Spinner (The Silkworm)
The High Jumper (The Flea)
The Honey Factory (The Honeybee)
The Flying Flashlight (The Firefly)

Isn't it amazing as you grow up how little attention you pay to some of natures most fascinating creatures. Reading this book brought back all sorts of childhood memories. The first day we found a praying mantis or the day I first saw ants carrying away a grasshopper and was amazed at their strength. I also remember thinking I was seeing things when I first saw a walking stick sitting on a wooden fence.

As children, my brothers and I also raised silk worms and I remember climbing over two fences to go get mulberry leaves
to keep them fed each day. There was a way to have them spin you all sorts of things and then still let them have enough silk
to wrap themselves up in. It was a fascinating process and not only taught us responsiblity, but showed how life is constantly changing and how even the smallest of insects change into what they were meant to be.

Each section gives just enough information to make any child curious enough to go out and look for these creatures.